As the culmination
of the effort to put more academically-oriented work on
Line of Departure Online Features, I gathered all of
these projects together on one page, in addition to the
central Articles
section. If I end up writing more such projects,
I'll add them there too. In the meantime, teachers
and especially students are invited to check out the
Academic Articles
page, and use them as examples to follow, and as
resources for their own research projects.

DECEMBER
11, 2016

It has been two
years since I updated Line of Departure Online Features,
and I'll admit that it's been too long.
TheBattle of Sadowa
is about to be published, and I am planning to doing
more game design work in 2017. Stay tuned from
details.

This year too I
finished work on my Master of Arts in military history,
concentrationg on World War II, over the summer.
It was officially conferred in August.
Take a look.

One of the last
major projects that I wrote for this six-year projects
is a research paper for an elective on command and
leadership in the Civil War. This covers the
logistical foundations of the Overland Campaign of 1864,
especially Ulysses S. Grant's use of naval and riverine
assets. You can read it
here.

This is probably
going to be the last significant paper that I upload to
Line of Departure Online Features. There are
others, but they have been submitted to a couple of
different wargaming magazines, so they won't be going
down a black hole by any means.

So what is next for
Line of Departure Online Features? I anticipate a
smaller proportion of historical articles, and more
projects directly related to games, both board and
computer. I anticipate that with my latest and
probably last venture into graduate school complete,
I'll have more time to write what I want, rather than
what I have to do for school.

DECEMBER
17, 2014

I'll admit that
today's update is more than a little overdue.
Suffice it to say that it has been a very busy year,
wtih two academic positions, the
Line of Departure
print edition, and graduate school. Additionally,
I returned to game design work with The Battle of
Sadowa, for
Turning Point
Simulations. Now under
development, this game is a strategic-level treatment of
the Austro-Prussian War, with low counter density on an
11" x 17" map. Look for this to be published in
2015.

In the meantime, I
present to you one more
historical article.
It is an analysis of the 77th Infantry Division's
performance in the Pacific War, and why it should be
viewed as an elite. There are more famous elites,
such as the Marines, paratroopers and Rangers, with the
latter two particularly being comprised of carefully
selected, specially-trained men. But the 77th
Infantry Division was something else; a formation of
reservists and draftees. Yet it demonstrated, from
Guam through the Ryukus, that it was a cut above.

MAY 27,
2013

Today's update is
another academic article. This one covers a
campaign that was intended to be a lot more important
than it turned out to be something less.
Initially, it was expected that the upon the breakout
from Normandy after D-Day, Patton's Third Army would be
tasked with seizing ports in Brittany to supply the
drive toward the Seine and then Germany. As it
turned out, this was overshadowed by opportunities to
destroy the German army around Falaise.
Furthermore, German resistance and sabotage denied most
of the area's port capacity to the Americans.

Yes, it has been a
year since I updated the site. One of the big
reasons was a need to retool the basic templates that I
use for the pages. These date back to the late
nineties, when what later became Line of Departure
Online Features was hosted by The Gamers Net, and I was
using code provided by them. Over the years I did
make changes in format and appearance, but a core of the
code remained, with a lot built on top of it.

The result was that
the new pages became harder and harder to set up
correctly. Then late this year, as I prepared the
newest articles, I found it very hard to get anything to
look the way that I wanted it. At that point it
made a lot of sense to start over. Now, I'm glad
that I did.

Altogether, there
are about a hundred different pages on the site.
I'm not about to change them all, and will not change
the existing articles to the new form. They work
now, and will work in the future. Instead, the new
projects will use the new templates, and so will the
basic Articles,
Scenarios
and Supplements and Player's Aids
pages. The changes in appearance will be
relatively minor, but making the work presentable will
be much easier for me.

The newest features
are a pair of academic articles. One analyzes the
Battle of Mortain,
the German counteroffensive in Normandy whose defeat
contributed to the American breakout. The other is
a short biographical piece about
Heinz Guderian.

I do plan more
projects for 2012, which is just around the corner.
Plus, the latest edition of Line of Departure's
print edition
is making good progress, and you can look forward to
that before long.

MAY 5, 2011

I promised more
content in 2011, and here is more content. Today's
addition is another article, this one a bit more
scholarly; a historiographic essay on the how three
major historians analyzed Grant's actions in the early
hours of Shiloh, when he was surprised by the
Confederate onslaught. The genesis is an
assignment that I did for an historiography class that I
took over the winter at
American Military Universitywhere,
besides working as a political science instructor, I'm
also pursuing a second Masters in military history.
For publication here, I changed the title slightly and
beefed up the conclusions, especially about the changes
in how Bruce Catton saw Grant.

And lest we forget;
Osama bin Laden is dead, and so I have to give a big
"Thank you" to the US Navy SEALs for a job well done.

JANUARY 18, 2011

I know that I missed
updating this site through 2010. I was extremely
busy keeping up with the print edition of
Line of Departure, and
there was that "massive career change." In fact,
it was the biggest of my life, going from selling
insurance to academia. Today, I am a full-time
online political science instructor at
American Military University,
and an adjunct instructor in political science at
La Roche College
in Pittsburgh.

This update includes
something rooted in that. I teach a course called
Experience of Modern War at La Roche, and wrote an
article about teaching a combined political
science-history course that centers on military history.
The article is
Titled Military History for
Beginners, and can be found through the
articles page as
well through
here.

Now, let's see what
else we can generate for Line of Departure Online
Features in 2011.

August 20, 2009

Gary Greenhalgh is
really on a roll. After yesterday's addition of
data sheets for the Dutch Navy, today he addresses the
Reggia Marina in Command at Sea.These are nine classes of
destroyers, destroyer escorts and torpedo boats, all
available in pdf format from the Supplementspage.

Enjoy!

August 19, 2009

It took me a while,
as I worked through a massive career change; don't
worry, it's all for the better. But now, I've
started updating Line of Departure Online Features.

Look to the
Supplementspage for a set of new ship data sheets for
Command at Sea,
courtesy of regular contributor Gary Greenhalgh.
This time, he turns his attention to the Royal
Netherlands Navy in World War II.

There definitely will
be more to follow.

January 5, 2008

Welcome to the
inauguration of Line of Departure Online Features,
a free service of
Line of Departure Wargaming
Quarterly. Since 1999, I have been
committed to providing high-quality articles, scenarios,
game supplements and player's aids for free via the web,
in addition to the features carried within Line of
Departure's pages. Until now, it has been in
concert with some of the best web sites in the industry,
but now I am going out on my own, with independent
servers and my own web domain.

Long-time readers
will recognize that the first features carried here were
originally published through the previous web sites:
Line of Departure@The Gamers Net, Line of
Departure/Military Gamer Online, and Line of
Departure/The Wargamer. Indeed, most of the
material accumulated there made the transition here,
changed mainly in terms of format, repair of broken
links, and some new proofreading. One or two
articles did not make the move, as I decided that they
did not really fit in with the new web site's focus.
Then maybe a half dozen scenarios for older computer
games got lost, as they were housed on an America Online
server when that company decided to eliminate its
hosting services.

Despite all of this,
please do not view Line of Departure Online Features as
simply old projects in a new venue. I do intend to
resume posting new ones on a regular basis.

And always, it will
be free.

So please enjoy the
return of an important component of the Line of
Departure Multiverse, and check back for new additions
to Line of Departure Online Features.